Scaling and Evolving Customer Marketing Programs: Insights from Adobe’s Journey

In a session titled Scaling and Evolving Customer Marketing Programs, Julie Perino, Director of Customer Marketing at Adobe, shared her insights into building impactful customer marketing programs. Drawing on her experience at Adobe and Marketo, Julie provided a roadmap for organizations looking to expand their customer marketing initiatives while staying true to a customer-centric approach.

Setting the Foundation: From Advocacy to Adoption

Julie’s journey began at Marketo, where she initially focused on traditional customer marketing, such as case studies and customer stories. However, as new leadership emphasized a “customer obsession” philosophy, her team began rethinking their approach, aiming to create more value-driven, end-to-end customer experiences.

One of the key shifts was integrating customer adoption into the customer marketing program. Recognizing that advocates emerge from satisfied customers, Julie and her team launched a series of multichannel nurture programs to support product adoption. Using tools like Pendo and Gainsight, they ensured that customers moved beyond basic product usage to explore “sticky” features, building deeper engagement.

Creating a Flywheel Effect: Advocacy and Adoption

Julie shared that successful customer marketing programs work as a flywheel, where customer advocacy drives adoption, and adoption, in turn, fuels advocacy. This reciprocal relationship created a sustainable growth loop at Adobe:

• Leveraging Advocates to Drive Adoption
  To maximize customer adoption, Julie’s team tapped into advocates, inviting them to share their experiences and insights with new customers. By infusing advocate-generated content into their marketing programs, they created a sense of community and trust, encouraging customers to explore more advanced product capabilities.
• Building an Executive Customer Advisory Board (CAB)
  With customer input and feedback at the core, Julie’s team launched an Executive CAB program, providing high-level advocates with a forum to influence Adobe’s product and strategy. This group’s feedback became instrumental in aligning Adobe’s product roadmap with customer needs, reinforcing the company’s customer-first philosophy.

Scaling Customer Marketing Programs at Adobe

When Adobe acquired Marketo, Julie’s team faced the challenge of scaling their proven customer marketing programs across a larger organization with different products and customer needs. Here’s how they tackled it:

• Building a Center of Excellence
  Julie and her team worked to establish a Center of Excellence (CoE) for customer marketing within Adobe, setting a North Star to guide best practices and foster cross-functional alignment. By acting as internal consultants, the CoE helped expand Adobe’s approach to customer marketing, advocating for adoption and advocacy to be interwoven into the company’s overall customer experience strategy.
• Tailoring Programs to Adobe’s Unique Audience
  Recognizing Adobe’s broad customer base and diverse products, Julie adapted Marketo’s original customer marketing blueprint to meet Adobe’s needs. Her team segmented customer marketing initiatives by customer personas and product lines, customizing programs for different engagement levels and industry segments. This flexibility allowed Adobe’s customer marketing efforts to resonate across its wide customer landscape.
• Partnering Cross-Functionally to Drive Impact
  Julie emphasized that achieving stakeholder alignment was key to scaling the program effectively. Her team collaborated closely with customer success, product, and finance departments to ensure customer marketing initiatives aligned with Adobe’s broader goals. By earning a “seat at the table” in go-to-market strategy meetings, the customer marketing team was able to communicate its value and secure ongoing support.

Key Takeaways for Scaling Customer Marketing Programs

Reflecting on her experiences, Julie provided several practical tips for customer marketing teams:

• Foster Cross-Functional Relationships
  Building relationships across departments, including customer success, finance, and product, is essential for securing support. Understanding each team’s priorities and aligning programs with their goals helps drive broader organizational buy-in.

• Standardize Processes with Playbooks
  Creating process playbooks and measurement frameworks is essential for scaling. These resources streamline operations and provide consistency, helping the team to manage program complexity as initiatives grow.

• Embrace a Customer-First Approach
  Julie emphasized that keeping a “customer-obsessed” mindset is vital. By consistently advocating for the customer’s voice, her team earned trust across departments, creating a culture where customer insights drive decision-making.

Final Thoughts: Cultivating a Customer-Obsessed Culture

Julie’s journey illustrates that scaling customer marketing programs requires a flexible, customer-centric approach, cross-functional partnerships, and a strong foundational strategy. By nurturing a culture of customer advocacy and leveraging adoption as an entry point, her team has created a powerful flywheel that drives sustainable customer engagement at Adobe.